The official Google blog recently featured a very cute video advertising Google Chrome which was made by the Google Japan team. I’ve embedded the video below for those of you who are interested… the interesting thing to me is that this video has been seen over two million times with its English language title on…
In a nutshell, a 67 year old Japanese man is suing his country because the weekend and holiday reduced tolls are only applicable to cars that pay by ETC (the Japanese equivalent to EZPass or other automatic toll paying systems). He claims it’s unfair that he has to pay full price on weekends just because…
I’ll embed the video here. The suicide problem is way too big here and growing. The only issue I’d take with the narration is the idea that suicide is still seen as an “honorable” way out to many people. I think the “honor” of suicide is the furthest thing from the minds of people who…
Aeon Japan will begin selling a 32″ flat panel tv for 49,800 yen tomorrow (February 20, 2009). Aeon is the giant retail company that runs Jusco, Saty, Max Valu supermarkets, and owns a ton more retail outlets. Although they sell electronics now, they are testing the waters to enter the market in earnest with the…
Most of the government agencies in Japan are creating Youtube channels. The cynical side of me wants to add, “so they can pretend that they are reaching out to and receiving the approval of the people”, but I’ll refrain. So here’s the top video from the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries. … and let…
So I bought myself about 33 liters of gas today for about 122 yen per liter. That’s a pretty good price for today, and an amazing price for tomorrow. The newspaper’s warning us that prices might go up to 160 in some places. Prime Minister Fukuda even came on air to apologize and thank the…
Generally in Japan, kids graduate from college in early Spring and then start working on April first. They generally need a lot of training in order to learn the right way to work. It’s not as crazy as people see on tv (like the scene in the first season of Heroes in which Hiro is…
In the U.S., Google’s doing a lot of things geared toward the iPhone… in Japan Google seems to have a connection with KDDI AU for cell phones. AU uses Google Search, and its auone.jp email services (which I suspect uses imap) is powered by gmail. That’s why in a previous post (“The iPhone in Japan?“)…